Paul Éluard was a founder of the Surrealist movement. When he
was sixteen he suffered from tuberculosis and had to interrupt
his education. During a stay at the sanatorium in Davos he met
born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova (called Gala), whom he married
in 1917. The couple had a daughter, Cécile.

Inspired
by Walt Whitman he wrote his first poems and in 1918 he met
André Breton and Louis Aragon. When his marriage was in trouble
he started to travel. His wife had an affair with Max Ernst
between 1922 and 1924. He returned to Paris in 1924 and around
his time his tuberculosis returned as well. Gala left him for
Salvador Dalí and he divorced her.

In 1934 he married
Maria Benz (called Nusch), who had been a model for Man Ray
and Picasso. Éluard was part of the French Resistance during
the Second World War and this was reflected in his poems. In
1942 he became a member of the Communist Party and after the
war he praised Stalin in his writings.

In 1946 Nusch
died and inspired by the grief he felt he wrote "Le temps déborde".
At the Congress of Peace in Mexico he met Dominique Laure, whom
he married in 1951. In 1952 he died from a heart attack. The
Communist Party organized the funeral at Père Lachaise and Picasso
sat next to Dominique Laure on the occasion. Nusch was buried
in section 84 of the same cemetery.